


the absence of

by thisissirius



Series: bondmate verse; october aftermath [1]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 07:05:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8318476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisissirius/pseuds/thisissirius
Summary: the aftermath of the crash. aaron and robert have a soulbond.





	

**Author's Note:**

> written for an anon on my tumblr, WHO ASKED FOR THIS. i have no idea why i wrote this except i had to. 
> 
> thanks to mer for reading this over. i'm sorry you're trying to resist and i just ruined it :P

Aaron feels Robert die. 

Lachlan’s safe on the shore. Aaron doesn’t even hesitate to go back, diving into the water, desperate to _protectsave_ Robert. Aaron makes out the shape of Robert’s body in the front seat of his car. He sees Robert’s face, the widened eyes, the swallow. He’s scared, Aaron realises, about the same time Robert’s emotions take a dive. Aaron feels them fading, curling away from him. 

_I love you,_ Robert says, mouths, his hand pressed to the dash of Aaron’s car. He doesn’t look away, twisting to see when the car starts to dive away from Aaron’s line of sight.

The steady heartbeat that thumps gently in the back of Aaron’s head, a constant noise that tells him Robert’s alive and safe, starts to slow.

 _nonononononono_. Aaron won’t make it, not before Robert’s life fades, and his chest seizes. He can’t breathe, skin tingling with fear and horror as Robert’s eyes slip closed. He’s drowning, Aaron feels the phantom pressure, the fear prickling Robert’s skin. 

The car disappears into the murky depths, and Aaron screams inside of his head. Robert won’t hear, _can’t_ hear, and he thinks about letting his own lungs flood, to follow Robert down into darkness. Before he can give in to the want, he feels hands curl under his shoulders, wrenching him up and out. 

_No!_ He shouts, doesn’t even know if he forms the word with his mouth, the essence of his mind that’s inherently Robert fades to nothing about the same time his consciousness does. 

 

 

“… his wristband is blue. He needs to be…”

“… Aaron, love, you need to wake up…”

“… I know you can hear me, you have to…”

“… he’ll answer when he’s ready, Miss Dingle, but…”

“… I love you, mate, you know I do, but you…”

 

 

Aaron runs a thumb over the wristband that’s pinching his skin red. He should loosen it, nurses have tried, but he keeps tightening it, keeps making it _hurt_. He doesn’t feel it, not really. He doesn’t feel much of anything. 

His shoulder is numb from laying on it for so long, his eyes throb, his whole body aches with the absence, with want. 

“… he’s not responding to anything, hasn’t moved in days. Is there nothing we can do?”

His mum’s been talking, a low murmur in the back of his consciousness, for a while now. His focus waxes and wanes, unable to fix on any one thing. He knows on the periphery that someone’s always in his room, someone’s always watching. He doesn’t care. 

“… bonds like this, it’s difficult when one of them is…”

_dead_

When one of them is dead. 

Aaron feels it again, the crippling grief and terror that washes over him at losing Robert forever, at having to walk out of the hospital alone. He grips the edge of the wristband, wonders if he just tightens it that bit more, perhaps he can he stop thinking about the gaping absence in his soul. 

“… what happens to him then?”

_you, ya idiot. I was gonna ask you to marry me._

The voice in his head doesn’t sound right, the echo of it isn’t the same. Aaron clenches his eyes tight shut, wants to shove everything down until he can — 

There’s a voice outside of the room that he recognizes with a startling clarity. 

“…kidnapped me and put me in the boot, and I—”

Aaron’s off the bed before he’s even thought about it, overwhelmed with anger and hatred and the want to hurt, to maim, to _kill_. Everything narrows down, oblivious to everything else as he slams open the door, tumbles into the corridor and sees him. 

Lachlan. 

Lachlan, who looks up and sees him. His eyes widen and then he’s off running. 

Aaron doesn’t hesitate. He hears the shouts to stop, people reaching for him, but he’s propelled by something more carnal than their worry and fear. Lachlan killed his bondmate. If it wasn’t for Lachlan, they’d be in the barn, they’d be — he’d have said — 

They’d be okay, and Aaron wouldn’t be alone. 

“I’ll _kill you_!” Aaron lunges for Lachlan, fingers gripping tight in the sleeve of his jacket. He pulls him around, doesn’t even blink at the sheer terror in Lachlan’s eyes. “You killed my bondmate, you creepy little shit, I’ll kill you!”

Hands wrap around Aaron’s body, more strength than he has to hold on to Lachlan. He kicks and screams, tries to break free of the people keeping him from this, from fixing what’s broken in his mind, his body, his heart. 

“I’ll kill you!”

“Get him out of here!” Someone yells. 

Lachlan’s tugged away, and Aaron fights harder. His cheeks are wet, his body shaking, but he still fights, the itch to kill Lachlan too much to ignore. “He killed my bondmate! I’ll kill him, let me go!”

“Aaron, stop!” 

He sees his mum, Victoria, Adam. He sees _Diane_ and crumples, sags against whoever’s holding him. “He killed him, he killed him, he’s —”

“I know, sweetheart,” Diane says, cupping Aaron’s face with her hands. 

Aaron doesn’t know where the tears are coming from. He curls his fingers into Diane’s coat, buries his face in her neck and cries. Her hand brushes through his hair, down his neck. He can hear her crying, feels the wetness against the top of his head, but he doesn’t care. It’s like a relief, except it’s not. It doesn’t even help, but he can’t make himself stop. 

“What am I supposed to do?” Aaron gasps in a breath.

Diane doesn’t answer, just presses a kiss to his temple. 

 

 

“… you’re going to have to make a decision.”

Aaron flicks his eyes to his mother and then back to the white walls. He’s in the bed once more, under constant scrutiny, itching to be free of everything. 

“Aaron? They need to…”

 _No._ He makes his mouth form the word, doesn’t know if he actually says it, but he sees his mum’s face fall. He must have, then. He scratches at the edges around his wristband. It’s still blue, though he knows people are trying to change it. One of the nurses, an orderly, his mum. The one thing Aaron knows is that if he lets them, if they wrap a black band around his wrist, it’s final. It’s done. He can’t — he doesn’t want that. 

He imagines he can almost hear the steady beep of a heart monitor.

His mum’s face swims into his vision. Her eyes are red, dark circles underneath. He feels a flicker of guilt, but then his eyes slide back over to the wall. If he focuses really hard, he can picture the room, the heart monitor, the pale face against white sheets. He’s shocked back to the present by his mother’s hands on his arm. 

“Aaron, I need you to listen to me. They’re going to turn it off.”

Aaron jerks, reaches for her hand and grips it, tighter than he means to. “No. No they’re not.”

Guilt. She’s _lying_ , he realises. “They need to, love, they—”

“They can’t,” Aaron says, angry. “They can’t because I won’t let them. He’s my bondmate, he’s mine, and —”

“He’s gone!” His mum’s yell seems to reverberate through the room. “He’s not coming back, Aaron, and you need to _stop this_!”

Aaron pushes her back, rolls off of the bed until he can face her. “Do you understand what it’s like to lose your _bondmate_ , mum? Do you know how empty it feels? I want to hurt myself, to scratch until the pain is worse, but it won’t be, because nothing can feel like this.”

His mum looks terrified, a hand pressed to her mouth, but Aaron can’t stop, not now he’s started. 

“I don’t know how to live without him. I don’t know how I’m supposed to _do this_ without him. I feel… wrong, different. I can’t do this if he’s —”

Aaron cuts himself off, feels it like an engine revving up. It hits full force, shocking him into breathlessness, with an excruciating pain that takes over everything. He’s gasping with it, stumbling into the cabinet beside the bed and sending a folder of paperwork to the floor. 

“Love?”

There’s something inherently _Robert_ exploding in his mind. Aaron wants it, needs it, and heads for the door at the same time an alarm blares through the room, down through the corridor. 

“What is it? What’s happening?” It’s his mum’s voice, shrill and high as he passes, but he ignores her. 

There are two doctors outside, one curls a hand around his upper arm. It shocks him, pain thrumming through his skin and bone and he wrenches out of his grasp. “Don’t.”

The nurse snaps, “He’s re-bonding,” and guides him towards Robert’s door, as if Aaron doesn’t know the way by heart, hasn’t memorised every corridor and window, every door and notice. 

There’s a litany of _robertrobertrobert_ in his head and the staccato gets louder the closer to Robert’s room he gets. He’s awake, Aaron thinks, he’s awake, alive, _whole_ and the sheer relief and happiness he feels is beaten only by the love that blossoms through his chest as someone opens the door to Robert’s room and he sees familiar blue eyes searching for him. 

“Robert.” It’s not his voice, not really, scratchy and raw from misuse and screaming. It doesn’t matter; he slides up next to Robert, cups a hand around the back of Robert’s neck. As soon as their skin touches, as soon as Robert grasps for his sleeve, pulls him in, he can feel everything. Robert spreads into every corner of Aaron’s mind, his body. He fills gaps that Aaron didn’t even know were empty and he sobs with relief, buries his face in Robert’s hair. “I thought-”

“I know,” Robert says, voice just as wrecked. He’s shaking, Aaron realises. Aaron runs his fingers through Robert’s hair. “I felt-”

Aaron doesn’t want to think about that, doesn’t want to remember the reality of not having Robert, and shoves it all aside, pushes love and acceptance at Robert until the shaking subsides and Robert lets out a slow breath into his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry.” It’s one of the nurses, her smile tentative but apologetic. “We need to run some tests, make sure everything is fine.”

“No,” Aaron says immediately, irritated and protective. He doesn’t want anyone to touch Robert, not now, maybe not ever. Robert frowns, but he doesn’t say anything, just keeps his fingers wrapped around Aaron’s wrist. 

The nurse makes a soft noise. “I appreciate that your bond is rebuilding, but we’re just trying to make sure he’s okay, that there’s no lasting damage from the coma.”

Aaron knows rationally that he should let them, that they’ve been in a car crash and there could be things wrong, but he can’t make himself pull away from Robert. They’re both alive, Aaron’s bond isn’t broken, it’s whole and perfect and all _his_.

“We can wait,” one of the doctors says, when it’s clear Aaron isn’t going to back down. “The bond can take an hour or so to re-solidify. Once the acclimatization has happened, we’ll run our tests.”

Unwilling to bend even to this, Aaron growls low in his throat, but Robert squeezes his wrist. 

“Thank you,” he says, eying Aaron carefully. “I just want - we need-”

“I fully understand,” the doctor says. “Come, we’ll clear the room.”

Aaron doesn’t drop his gaze back to Robert until he’s sure everyone’s left the room. Once the door is firmly closed, Aaron looks. He drinks in the sight of Robert’s face, the blue of his eyes, the rise and fall of his chest, the hand he’s constantly sliding up Aaron’s arm. Desperate for touch, for a connection, he leans down, kisses Robert. He doesn’t know how long they kiss, how many times they break and then press back, lips tingling with the force. 

When they finally part, Robert sinks back into the bed, exhausted. 

“Sleep,” Aaron says, voice low. He brushes fingertips over Robert’s cheek, smiles as Robert pushes into the touch. 

“Love you,” Robert says, his eyes closing. He’s fighting it, Aaron can hear the effort in his words, the desperation to keep looking at Aaron. 

“I promise I’m not going anywhere.” Aaron’s voice catches on the words. 

Robert’s eyes blink open. “M’sorry.”

Aaron wants to reassure him, but he can’t keep the panic from his face, memories he’s never going to be able to forget battling to take precedence in his mind. 

Robert sucks in a breath, it’s obvious he can see them, feel the emotions rolling off of Aaron in waves. “Aaron, Aaron I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” Aaron says, gripping Robert’s hand rightly. “I’m here, you’re here. Feel that?”

He brushes against Robert’s mind, envelopes him in his thoughts and emotions. Robert’s eyelids flutter, his fingers twitch in Aaron’s grip. Suddenly, Aaron’s overwhelmed; he feels a tumble of _loveaffectionfearsadnesshopelove_ rolling over him as Robert pulls him into his mind. It feels — they’ve never done this before, never let themselves sink into each other. Through the affair, Robert’s shooting, Gordon, there’s never been the time, there’s always been a reluctance to let go. 

Here, now, it feels right, like everything’s falling into place. 

_Stay_. Aaron means now, forever, never leave.

 _I promise_. Robert means I love you, forever, I’m alive. 

Aaron presses their foreheads together, clings to Robert’s hands like a lifeline, and wraps himself up in Robert so tightly they’ll never be separated again.

**Author's Note:**

> find me at [tumblr](http://sapphicsugden.tumblr.com)


End file.
